Midwest Memo
Time's Up
by Alan Shultz

Put your candy canes down.

Please pass your Christmas wrapping paper to the front of the room.

Kindly deflate those enormous refrigerator sized blow-up snow globes in the front yard.

And carefully un-deck the halls gathering up each and every bough of holly and paying particular attention to removing the Christmas lights leftover from '05 tacked up under the eves of the house.

Last, but not least, and I know this is going to be hard, lose the Poinsettia plant. I mean toss it, bury it, recycle it, give it a oneway trip down the disposal or haul it to the curb.

Like the sweet, but clueless, guests who don't know to leave when the party is over, the Poinsettia plant hangs on after Christmas attempting to "blend in" with the other houseplants. I'll have nothing of that argument, thank you.

Now I know my view is a little extreme. I'm one who thinks the Christmas lights should come down about noon on the 26th. I support any fashion dictate that nixes all red and green combinations after New Year's Eve. In fact, I'd vote in favor of some zoning ordinance that banned Santa and all lawn ornaments as of Dec. 31.

But nothing hangs on, not leftover eggnog, not stale peppermints, not the occasional stuffed elf that got missed when the ornaments were packed up, nothing tries to linger longer and with more persistence than the Poinsettia plant.

Frankly, it makes me see red, well red and green.

There's nothing more annoying than a spindly, faded Poinsettia in February. I mean, come on, when your time is up, it's up. We read that "to everything there is a season." So I say to the Poinsettia lovers and hoarders out there, excuse me, pardon me, the season is up.

Let's not confuse the red meant for Valentine's Day with the pale, worn out, over and done with, fleeting, fading, former red of the Poinsettia plant past its prime.

At the office I work at they "hire out" the holiday decorating. Sometime after Thanksgiving contract workers descend on the place and in two hours time we are suddenly all glitz and silver and gold with faux snow and faux gifts and, of course, more than our share of Poinsettias.

This year they really over did the Poinsettias. I'd like to say there were a dozen or so of them. I'd like to describe them in the past tense. Regrettably, the Poinsettias are quite in the here and now. There are a dozen or so of them - present tense. The professional decorators returned a week or so ago and collected up all the glitz and silver and gold, but they left the Poinsettias.

And now the secretaries are watering the things.

This trio of secretaries are the same ones who can't keep a violet plant alive for a week. Fresh flowers last about a day under the supervision of these three. But, suddenly, without a hint of warning, they are on a mission to extend the natural life of plants that needed to find their way to the curb several weeks back.

What is it about Poinsettias that lure folks to allow them to hang on after the floral welcome mat is pulled in for the year? It's certainly not their looks. At least I don't see it. They sure don't get better with age. Taller, maybe, but always thinner and spindlier and pale, pale, pale.

I know some folks take this plant on as a challenge. "Let's just see how long..." I just know that somewhere there is someone claiming to have the oldest living Poinsettia plant - a gift from the bank back in '68- something like that.

Oh well, next year I'm going to suggest that the office go with Christmas cactus. I know the secretaries will manage to kill those off long before the new year.